Let’s begin with a quick look at the component parts of Milli Vanilli:

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Teh Look

Leather jackets and bicycle shorts do make a powerful statement. They say; “I am as cool as The Fonz, and by the way, here is my cock.”

Teh Dancing

Running on the spot makes you look a bit silly, but doing it tandem with someone else apparently looks quite nifty to some people.

Teh Singing

Technically acceptable, if mediocre and lacking in soul.

Teh Music

Ditto, but good enough for entry into the pop charts.

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But when you combine all of the above, suddenly your singles are Top Ten and you’re getting a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Even individual components begin to look individually impressive. Teh Dancing, for example; doing energetic motions while you also appear to be singing in tune is enough to impress most people.

But take away one single component that turns out not to be real, and suddenly as far as the market is concerned, this is all you’re good for:

The important thing to remember is that Milli Vanilli could sing (a bit) and the people who sang for them could sing (a bit better) but neither charted higher than 76 outside of Europe after the backlash.

I guess the point I’m trying to make in a roundabout way is that Paul Staines is quite good at muckraking (he used to do it for a living, you know) and Iain Dale is quite good at village gossip (and championing a standard of blogging that he himself doesn’t subscribe to)… but that’s as far as it goes.